Did you know?

​Splashed across headlines – almost weekly – are tales of companies suffering from cyber-attacks. The reach of the hackers is broad and varied. They represent hostile governments, terrorists, criminals, whistle-blowers, activists and general opportunists. They target personal financial data, health records and company intellectual property. They steal and take hostages.

The reality is that no company is immune. Your systems may be locked down tight, but what about your payroll provider? Your payment processing vendor? Your website host? Disruption to those platforms, to name just a few, can impact your ability to manage your business and your company’s reputation.

Picture this, you wake up and find hackers have stolen personal data – social security numbers, credit card information – from all of your customers since you started collecting that data 20 years ago. You call your insurance agent only to find your general liability policy won’t cover you.

Scary enough to give you nightmares?

Enter Cyber Liability Insurance

As the rate of data breaches skyrockets, the insurance industry is racing to catch up, offering more specific and targeted coverage designed to protect the risks associated with cyberattacks. And, although coverage continues to evolve as underwriters struggle to gather actuarial data, more and more insurers are assessing a company’s cyber risk management procedures and overall exposure to create programs that will protect against a wide variety of cyber crimes.

Now, given that these risks are highly customized, they aren’t cheap. And, securing a policy will involve an insurer taking a deep dive into your company’s cyber practices – including your risk management procedures, your disaster recovery plan, your firewalls, who has access to your systems, the protections & procedures you have in place for combatting viruses and malware – all with respect to your online systems.

​A comprehensive cyber liability insurance program includes:

Identity theft as a result of security breaches

Business interruption a network shutdown.

Damage to the firm’s reputation

Costs associated with damage to data records.

Theft of valuable digital assets, including customer lists, business trade secrets and other similar electronic business assets​

Introduction of malware, worms and other malicious computer code

Human error leading to inadvertent disclosure of sensitive information

The cost of credit monitoring services as a result of a security breach

Lawsuits alleging trademark or copyright infringement

​At the end of the day, as with all the insurance that protects your business, you have to weigh the cost of protection vs. exposure. Just remember the hackers out there are a crafty and merciless bunch. You may not, in the end, be able to protect your data, but you can protect your business.

Here at Fortune Insurance, we work with companies across all industries on developing cyber liability risk programs that address the latest in electronic attacks. Want to learn more? Contact us.